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Fathom is a great free notetaker — until you hit the part most people miss: on the free plan, advanced AI summaries and action items are capped at 5 calls a month. After that you get a basic transcript-style summary until the cycle resets. Raven gives you unlimited AI notes because they run on your own API key, adds live help during the call (Fathom is after-the-call only), and keeps everything local with no bot in the meeting.

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At a glance

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Price

Fathom’s free tier is genuinely generous on recording, transcription, and storage (no minute cap) — the limit is the AI: 5 advanced summaries/action-item runs per month. To remove that you’re on Premium at $16/user/mo (billed annually; $20 monthly), and CRM sync lives in Business at $25/user/mo. Raven’s AI is unlimited because you’re billing your own provider for usage — typically a few dollars a month — with no per-seat fee.

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Where your meetings live

Fathom stores your recordings, transcripts, and summaries in its cloud. Raven keeps them in a local SQLite database on your machine — no account, no server, and (because it’s open source) a data path you can audit. Audio only ever goes to the transcription/AI providers you configured with your own keys.

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What Fathom does better (honestly)

  • Calendar auto-join: Fathom’s bot joins scheduled meetings automatically. Raven detects a meeting and offers to start (or auto-starts) locally, but it doesn’t join from your calendar.
  • CRM sync (HubSpot/Salesforce), clips/playlists, team collaboration, and 15+ summary templates are mature.
  • A very polished, zero-setup hosted experience.
If you’re a team that lives in a CRM and wants shared clips, Fathom’s paid tiers are strong.

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When Raven wins

  • You want unlimited AI notes without a 5-a-month cap or a subscription.
  • You want help during the call, not just a recap after.
  • You don’t want a bot joining, and you want recordings on your machine.
  • You’re on Windows and want native capture (not just Mac bot-free beta).

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Switching from Fathom

  1. Download Raven and add your keys.
  2. Set meeting auto-start (Settings → prompt or auto) so you never forget to record.
  3. Run both for a week; compare notes + action items. Cancel Fathom once Raven owns the habit. (Fathom importers are on the roadmap; export what you need from Fathom in the meantime.)

Download Raven

Free, open source, Mac + Windows. Bring your own keys.

How notes + action items work

Structured action items, follow-up email, export.
Fathom pricing and the 5-call free AI cap verified August 2026 (fathom.ai/pricing). Vendors change pricing often — confirm before relying on a figure.